The Missing Bride Part 45

The storm howled and raved as she went, and the strong blast, driving through the dilapidated window-sashes, nearly extinguished her light before she reached the study door.

She blew out the light and set down the lamp, and rapped at the door.

Again and again she rapped, without awakening any response from within.

Then she turned the latch, opened the door, and entered. No wonder she had received no answer.

The abstracted man before her seemed dead to every sight and sound around him. He sat before the table in the middle of the room, his elbow on the mahogany; his face bowed upon his hand, his haggard countenance revealing a still, speechless despair as awful as it was profound.

Miriam approached and stood by him, her breath went by his cheek, so near she stood, and yet her presence was unheeded. She stooped to see the object upon which he gazed--the object that now shut out all the world from his sight--it was a long bright tress of golden auburn hair.

"Mr. Willc.o.xen!"

He did not hear her--how should he hear her low tones, when he heard not the cannonading of the storm that shook the house to its foundations?

"Mr. Willc.o.xen!" she said once more.

But he moved not a muscle.

"Mr. Willc.o.xen!" she repeated, laying her hand upon his arm.

He looked up. The expression of haggard despair softened out of his countenance.

"Is it you, my dear?" he said. "What has brought you here, Miriam? Were you afraid of the storm? There is no danger, dear child--it has nearly expended its force, and will soon be over--but sit down."

"Oh, no! it is not the storm that has brought me here, though I scarcely remember a storm so violent at this season of the year, except one--this night seven years ago--the night that Marian Mayfield was murdered!"

He started--it is true that he had been thinking of the same dread tragedy--but to hear it suddenly mentioned pierced him like an unexpected sword thrust.

Miriam proceeded, speaking in a strange, level monotone, as if unwilling or afraid to trust her voice far:

"I came this evening to restore a small but costly article of _virtu_, belonging to you, and left in my care some time ago by the boy Melchisedek. It is an antique dagger--somewhat rusty and spotted. Here it is."

And she laid the poniard down upon the tress of hair before him.

He sprang up as if it had been a viper--his whole frame shook, and the perspiration started from his livid forehead.

Miriam, keeping her eye upon him, took the dagger up.

"It is very rusty, and very much streaked," she said. "I wonder what these dark streaks can be? They run along the edge, from the extreme point of the blade, upwards toward the handle; they look to me like the stains of blood--as if a murderer had stabbed his victim with it, and in his haste to escape had forgotten to wipe the blade, but had left the blood upon it, to curdle and corrode the steel. See! don't it look so to you?" she said, approaching him, and holding the weapon up to his view.

"Girl! girl! what do you mean?" he exclaimed, throwing his hand across his eyes, and hurrying across the room.

Miriam flung down the weapon with a force that made its metal ring upon the floor, and hastening after him, she stood before him; her dark eyes fixed upon his, streaming with insufferable and consuming fire, that seemed to burn through into his brain. She said:

"I have heard of fiends in the human shape, nay, I have heard of Satan in the guise of an angel of light! Are you such that stand before me now?"

"Miriam, what do you mean?" he asked, in sorrowful astonishment.

"This is what I mean! That the mystery of Marian Mayfield's fate, the secret of your long remorse, is no longer hidden! I charge you with the murder of Marian Mayfield!"

"Miriam, you are mad!"

"Oh! well for me, and better still for you, if I were mad!"

He was tremendously shaken, more by the vivid memories she recalled than by the astounding charge she made.

"In the name of Heaven, what leads you to imagine such impossible guilt!"

"Good knowledge of the facts--that this month, eight years ago, in the little Methodist chapel of the navy yard, in Washington City, you made Marian Mayfield your wife--that this night seven years since, in just such a storm as this, on the beach below Pine Bluff, you met and murdered Marian Willc.o.xen! And, moreover, I as sure you, that these facts which I tell you now, to-morrow I will lay before a magistrate, together with all the corroborating proof in my possession!"

"And what proof can you have?"

"A gentleman who, unknown and unsuspected, witnessed the private ceremony between yourself and Marian; a packet of French letters, written by yourself from Glasgow, to Marian, in St. Mary's, in the spring of 1823; a note found in the pocket of her dress, appointing the fatal meeting on the beach where she perished. Two physicians, who can testify to your unaccountable absence from the deathbed of your parent on the night of the murder, and also to the distraction of your manner when you returned late the next morning."

"And this," said Thurston, gazing in mournful amazement upon her; "this is the child that I have nourished and brought up in my house! She can believe me guilty of such atrocious crime--she can aim at my honor and my life such a deadly blow?"

"Alas! alas! it is my duty! it is my fate! I cannot escape it! I have bound my soul by a fearful oath! I cannot evade it! I shall not survive it! Oh, all the heaven is black with doom, and all the earth tainted with blood!" cried Miriam, wildly.

"You are insane, poor girl! you are insane!" said Thurston, pityingly.

"Would Heaven I were! would Heaven I were! but I am not! I am not! Too well I remember I have bound my soul by an oath to seek out Marian's destroyer, and deliver him up to death! And I must do it! I must do it!

though my heart break--as it will break in the act!"

"And you believe me to be guilty of this awful crime!"

"There stands the fearful evidence! Would Heaven it did not exist! oh!

would Heaven it did not!"

"Listen to me, dear Miriam," he said, calmly, for he had now recovered his self-possession. "Listen to me--I am perfectly guiltless of the crime you impute to me. How is it possible that I could be otherwise than guiltless. Hear me explain the circ.u.mstances that have come to your knowledge," and he attempted to take her hand to lead her to a seat. But with a slight scream, she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away, saying wildly:

"Touch me not! Your touch thrills me to sickness! to faintness!

curdles--turns back the current of blood in my veins!"

"You think this hand a blood-stained one?"

"The evidence! the evidence!"

"I can explain that evidence. Miriam, my child, sit down--at any distance from me you please--only let it be near enough for you to hear. Did I believe you quite sane, Miriam, grief and anger might possibly seal my lips upon this subject--but believing you partially deranged--from illness and other causes--I will defend myself to you.

Sit down and hear me."

Miriam dropped into the nearest chair.

Mr. Willc.o.xen took another, and commenced:

"You have received some truth, Miriam. How it has been presented to you, I will not ask now. I may presently. I was married, as you have somehow ascertained, to Marian Mayfield, just before going to Europe. I corresponded with her from Glasgow. I did appoint a meeting with her on the beach, upon the fatal evening in question--for what purpose that meeting was appointed, it is bootless to tell you, since the meeting never took place--for some hours before I should have set out to keep my appointment, my grandfather was stricken with apoplexy. I did not wish to leave his bedside until the arrival of the doctor. But when the evening wore on, and the storm approached, I grew uneasy upon Marian's account, and sent Melchisedek in the gig to fetch her from the beach to this house--never to leave it. Miriam, the boy reached the sands only to find her dying. Terrified half out of his senses, he hurried back and told me this story. I forgot my dying relative--forgot everything, but that my wife lay wounded and exposed on the beach. I sprung upon horseback, and galloped with all possible haste to the spot. By the time I had got there the storm had reached its height, and the beach was completely covered with the boiling waves. My Marian had been carried away. I spent the wretched night in wandering up and down the bluff above the beach, and calling on her name. In the morning I returned home to find my grandfather dead, and the family and physicians wondering at my strange absence at such a time. That, Miriam, is the story."

Miriam made no comment whatever. Mr. Willc.o.xen seemed surprised and grieved at her silence.

"What have you now to say, Miriam?"